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Mom calmly calls 911 after allegedly drowning son

Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY 7:24 a.m. PDT April 3, 2014

This booking photograph, released by Allegheny County (Pa.) police shows Laurel Michelle Schlemmer, who is charged with drowning her 3-year-old son and leaving his 6-year-old brother in critical condition.(Photo: Allegheny Count Police via AP)

A western Pennsylvania woman who is charged with drowning her 3-year-old son and attempting to kill his older brother in a bathtub can be heard on a 911 tape calmly reporting the incident to police.

Laurel Schlemmer, of McCandless, told the Allegheny County police dispatcher, "Um, my two sons. I think that they've, they've drowned in our bathtub."

She called police only minutes after she allegedly pushed both boys into the water and sat on them fully clothed.

The 40-year-old stay-at-home-mom told police she thought they would be a better mother to her 7-year-old son if the younger kids "were in heaven," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. According to a criminal complaint, she told police she heard "crazy voices" telling her to hold them under water.

Luke, 3, died at the scene but 6-year-old Daniel was hospitalized in critical condition.

She was arraigned on charges of criminal homicide, attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault and child endangerment.

Schlemmer told police that she pulled the boys — unconscious — from the tub, stripped them and put their wet clothes in a garbage bag, the newspaper reports.

She then went into the study in her two-story home and called 911.

On the tape, Schlemmer is heard in a calm, high voice explaining the drowning incident to the 911 operator, the Post-Gazette reports.

"I, uh, let my 6- and 3-year old sons play in the bathtub a little bit before their bath this morning," she says. "And, uh, I was, and then I went to, to the restroom and, um, took longer than I should have or planned and then I came back. They're unconscious."

A stuffed animal and flowers sit along the walkway outside the home in McCandless, Pa., April 2, 2014, where two children were found unresponsive in a bathtub.Their mother, Laurel Michelle Schlemmer, was charged with drowning her 3-year-old son and leaving his 6-year-old brother in critical condition after she allegedly pushed the boys underwater in a bathtub, then sat on them. Schlemmer, 40, was arraigned on charges of criminal homicide, attempted homicide, aggravated assault and child endangerment.(Photo: Joe Mandak AP)

Later, the 911 operator, asks, "Are they breathing?"

"It doesn't look like it, sir," she says.

According to her pastor, Dan Hendley, of North Park Church, Schlemmer was involved in an incident 10 months ago in which she backed into the two boys with her van, leaving one of them unable to walk for awhile.

One of the boys suffered broken bones and the other received internal injuries, KDKA-TV reports, quoting unnamed sources.

"There was no concern that there was anything but a terrible accident that occurred in that situation," Hendley told the Associated Press.

"We all had sympathy for Michelle," he said. "She thought they had run inside, and in fact they were still behind the van. What really happened there, God knows, but that's the way we were dealing with that at that time."

Court records also show that Schlemmer left a child unattended in a hot car in 2009.